Apple loses patent lawsuit filed by University of Wisconsin-Madison's licensing arm over chip technology - Silicon Valley Business Journal

 

Gina Hall Contributor

 

 

A jury has decided Apple used the chip technology of the University of… more

 

Apple may have to pay up to $862 million in damages to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s licensing arm after a jury found on Tuesday that the Cupertino company used chip technology without permission.

The Madison, Wisconsin, jury noted that the university licensing arm’s patent, which improves processor efficiency, is valid, according to Reuters. The case will move forward to determine how much Apple must pay for infringing on the patent.

 

A jury has decided Apple used the chip technology of the University of… more

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So what does this mean for Apple?

The lawsuit
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) brought suit against Apple in January 2014 for patent infringement on a 1998 patent for improving chip efficiency.

The jury considered whether Apple's A7, A8 and A8X processors found in the iPhone 5s, 6, 6 Plus and the iPad violated the patent. Apple denied infringement and argued the patent was invalid, the report said.

Moving forward
U.S. District Judge William Conley ruled that Apple could be liable for up to $862.4 million in damages. How much of that will Apple pay? The trial will move forward in three phases: liability, damages, and a decision over whether Apple infringed the patent willfully. If Apple knowingly infringed on the patent, the penalties will be more severe.

Additional Apple suits
It doesn’t look like this case will be the end of Apple’s run-in with the university. Last month, WARF launched another lawsuit against Apple. The second suit is aimed at Apple’s latest chips, the A9 and A9X used in the iPhone 6S, 6S Plus and the iPad Pro. WARF sued Intel Corp. in 2008 for violating the same patent, but the case was settled in 2009 prior to trial.

Apple has been involved in several patent suits this year, sometimes coming out as the loser, other times emerging on top.

In early 2015, Swedish telecom company Ericsson sued Apple for patent infringement, a move that could halt sales of the popular Apple products in the U.S., although it likely wouldn’t come to such a drastic scenario. If Ericsson wins the dispute, Apple would likely have to pay Ericsson between $250 million and $750 million in fees annually, based on estimates of handset sales and royalty payments per phone, according to Reuters, citing of analysts familiar with the situation.

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You're living in a lab: Microsoft, Accenture, Siemens, UI Labs tinker with a new 'city that works' here - In Other News - Crain's Chicago Business

 

Chicago, the city that works, will be the test subject in an experiment to create the city that works better.

Microsoft, Accenture, Commonwealth Edison and Siemens are partnering with the city of Chicago to figure out how technology can help design and operate more efficient cities. The effort, called CityWorks, is the second major program for UI Labs, a Chicago-based research consortium between top universities and companies across the Midwest.

Launched two years ago, UI Labs is best known for its first project, a federally funded effort to develop next-generation manufacturing technology called the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute.

CityWorks will bring the Internet of Things to bear on cities, from infrastructure to energy management. The aim is to turn loose researchers from universities and companies to use Chicago as a giant laboratory to gather data and develop new technologies. Widespread Internet connectivity, smartphones and cheap sensors attached to cars, roads, buildings and people already are providing massive amounts of data.

Chicago is vying to maintain its dominance in architecture, engineering and urban planning into an increasingly digital future. Technology companies including Microsoft, IBM, Cisco Systems and Siemens have been dabbling in aspects of what's loosely described as “smart cities.” And cities such as Berlin, London, Singapore, Toronto, Tokyo and San Jose, Calif., have been praised for individual advances in areas such as transportation or climate.

“No one has claimed the mantle of digital planning,” says John Tolva, the city's former chief technology officer who now is president of Positiv¬Energy Practice, a consulting firm involved in smart building and city design. “Chicago's long history of architectural and structural innovation is based on technology. . . .If this succeeds, we'll be the place other cities and countries come to learn (from).”

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CHICAGO AS TEST SUBJECT

Microsoft picked Chicago as the first of several communities where it will invest in the Internet of Things to figure out “how is tech going to live and breathe in the fabric of big metropolitan areas?” says Dan'l Lewin, Mountain View, Calif.-based vice president for technology and civic engagement.

Unlike the digital-manufacturing lab, which received $80 million in federal funding, CityWorks will be privately funded. Lewin declines to discuss the terms of Microsoft's commitment, and Caralynn Nowinski, executive director of UI Labs, declines to disclose the budget.

The project traces back to a conversation between Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel during a visit to Chicago by Ballmer.

“We decided this would be a great place to put a bet on the table—a working model,” Lewin says. “Chicago presented strong leadership and an incredible infrastructure opportunity. New York is the biggest city, but it's five boroughs and the geography is spread out. Los Angeles is also spread out.”

Microsoft and the other partners will draw on deep technology and infrastructure resources—and strong ties to Chicago. The software maker has 550 employees in the city. Siemens' building technologies division is based in Buffalo Grove. Chicago long has been a hub for Accenture's consulting and technology teams. Chicago-based ComEd increasingly is using technologies such as Internet-connected meters and drones to improve and maintain its infrastructure.

They'll pair up with local universities that have research institutes focused on transportation, architecture, engineering, urban planning, energy management, computation and data analysis.

The other ingredient is a city that has emerged as a leader in using data to deliver services such as public transit, policing and pest control. It also took the lead in making data available to technologists who regularly host hackathons to develop apps to track buses, sewage overflows or car crashes involving pedestrians or cyclists.

Like the digital-manufacturing institute, CityWorks will be housed at UI Labs' headquarters on Goose Island, set to open later this spring. Specific CityWorks research programs haven't been decided, but proposals are underway and should be selected by year-end.

Because the labs draw heavily on private companies and research universities as partners, they won't generate a lot of new jobs or new facilities. “There will be some dedicated staff. It's not about building up internal capability with 1,000 scientists,” Nowinski says. “But with our partners, we'll have 1,000 scientists working on our projects.”

The long-term goal of UI Labs is to have five or six programs in various industries, such as agriculture and food safety, where the Midwest has academic expertise and corporate partners. The idea is to spark collaboration between the state's universities and companies to turn basic research into new commercial technology and companies, replicating some of the success seen in Silicon Valley and Boston. So far, that success has proved elusive for Chicago and other parts of the country.

“Is this going to be the right formula? We're about to find out,” says Robert Rosner, a physicist at the University of Chicago and former director of Argonne National Laboratory. “Everybody understands what we're doing is an experiment.”

You're living in a lab: Microsoft, Accenture, Siemens, UI Labs tinker with a new 'city that works' here - In Other News - Crain's Chicago Business

Republicans back down in fight against Internet regulation | The Kansas City Star The Kansas City Star

 

WASHINGTON

Senior Republicans conceded Tuesday that the grueling fight with President Barack Obama over the regulation of Internet service appears over, with the president and an army of Internet activists victorious.

The Federal Communications Commission is expected on Thursday to approve regulating Internet service like a public utility, prohibiting companies from paying for faster lanes on the Internet. While the two Democratic commissioners are negotiating over technical details, they are widely expected to side with the Democratic chairman, Tom Wheeler, against the two Republican commissioners.

And Republicans on Capitol Hill, who once blasted the plan as “Obamacare for the Internet,” now say they are unlikely to pass a legislative response that would undo perhaps the biggest policy shift since the Internet became a reality.

“We’re not going to get a signed bill that doesn’t have Democrats’ support,” said Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican and chairman of the

Read the entire article by clicking on the following:  Republicans back down in fight against Internet regulation | The Kansas City Star The Kansas City Star

Report: Automakers fail to fully protect against hacking

WASHINGTON (AP) — Automakers are cramming cars with wireless technology, but they have failed to adequately protect those features against the real possibility that hackers could take control of vehicles or steal personal data, according to an analysis of information that manufacturers provided to a senator.

Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., asked automakers a series of questions about the technologies and and safeguards against hackers built into their vehicles. He also asked about how the information that vehicle computers gather and often transmit wirelessly is protected.

Markey posed his questions after researchers showed how hackers can get into the controls of some popular cars and SUVs, causing them suddenly to accelerate, turn, sound the horn, turn headlights off or on and modify speedometer and gas-gauge readings.

The responses from 16 manufacturers "reveal there is a clear lack of appropriate security measures to protect drivers against hackers who may be able to take control of a vehicle or against those who may wish to collect and use personal driver information," a report by Markey's staff concludes.

Read the complete report:  Report: Automakers fail to fully protect against hacking

First-Ever Comet Landing Next Week to Be Truly Epic, Scientists Say

 

…The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft is just days away from releasing its Philae lander down to the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and scientists working with the mission can feel the anticipation building for the Nov. 12 landing.

"We're all excited about this," Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor said during an ESA Google+ webcast today (Nov. 7.). "You should be excited about this … My kids finally think their dad is cool because he works on Rosetta." [See images from Rosetta comet mission]….

Click on following to read the entire article:  First-Ever Comet Landing Next Week to Be Truly Epic, Scientists Say

Bionic body parts: what's already here (eyes!) and what's coming soon

 

In June of 2014, the FDA approved the first exoskeleton for medical use: ReWalk. The system consists of motorized leg braces that someone tells to walk, stand up, or sit down using a remote control. The person also wears a backpack housing ReWalk's power supply and computer. The device is specifically approved for people with lower-body paralysis.

Other notable medical exoskeletons include the Ekso Bionics' Ekso, which is approved for use in physical therapy and rehab, and the HAL series by Japanese company Cyberdyne.

The military has also been a big player in this field. Ekso Bionics previously developed the hydraulic powered HULC (Human Universal Load Carrier), which Lockheed Martin is now developing for military and industrial uses. Lockheed's website describes the HULC as something that could help military personnel carry up to 200 pounds of heavy combat gear for extended periods of time without fatigue. And Raytheon also has a suit: the XOS.

Several other programs having also been developing strength suits for military use, including US Special Operations Command's TALOS (Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit), which seeks "an advanced infantry uniform that promises to provide superhuman strength with greater ballistic protection," according to a US Army statement, and Darpa's Warrior Web program, with the goal of a soft, pliable supersuit.

2) Bionic eyes that give sight to the blind

© Provided by Vox.com Second Sight Argus.

There are many researchers working on bionic eyes, but Second Sight's Argus II implant became the first FDA-approved bionic eye in 2013. And it actually does give sight to the blind — it's approved for people with retinitis pigmentosa, a disease that affects more than 2 million people around the world.

The Argus II involves a 60-electrode array that gets implanted in the eye in order to restore its function. A camera mounted on a pair of glasses records visual information about the world. This info then gets parsed by a small video-processing unit. Then this information gets wirelessly transferred to the electrode-array implant, which activates neurons in the back of the eye and sends messages to the brain.

So far, the resolution is limited, and it definitely doesn't bring people anywhere near 20/20 vision. But it provides enough grayscale resolution to let people see the outline of a doorway, the movement of a person or large object, or the lines on a crosswalk. Some have even been able to identify letters of the alphabet that are a few centimeters tall.

Second Sight is currently working to bring the technology to even more people. They announced in September that they'll be starting trials for blind patients with age-related macular degeneration, which affects 20 to 25 million people worldwide.

And if this seems totally nuts to you, keep in mind that bionic ears — cochlear implants — are already worn by some 300,000 people.

3) Robot limbs that can be controlled by the mind

© Provided by Vox.com Braingate 2.

One of the most impressive pieces of bionics research has been the BrainGate project, which uses brain implants in people with paralysis to allow them to physically interact with the world.

The implant has 96 electrodes that read signals from the brain. And with intensive and long training, some patients have been able to use the system to do some impressive things.

In a study published in Nature in 2006, researchers showed that a patient could use the system to move a computer cursor, open simulated email, and operate a television. And in 2012, they followed up with another paper and showed that two people used the system to instruct a robot hand to pick things up. One patient who had the implant for five years was even able to use the robotic hand to drink coffee. The project still continues today, and researchers are currently recruiting for even more trials.

4) Prosthetic limbs that feel like part of your body

© Provided by Vox.com

Touch Bionics i-limb ultra revolution.

Prosthetic limbs have existed for some time — but now they're getting smarter.

For example, Touch Bionics' i-Limb Ultra, a prosthetic hand with motorized joints, can smartly shape itself to an object someone is trying to grasp or read muscle signals from the skin of someone's upper arm to take on a pre-programmed configuration.

More promising still, researchers are now working on experimental bionic limbs that can communicate more intuitively with people's bodies. This can involve sensors on the skin or even sensors implanted into the body, such as the IMES muscle sensors being used with experimental prosthetics on real people. "I still close what I think is my hand," James Sides told Popular Science. "I open my hand, and rotate it up and down; I close my fingers and the hand closes. It’s exactly as if I still had a hand."

Another possibility is to interface with implants that attach directly to people's nerves and brains.

The next step beyond that is getting feedback from the limb back to the person so that people can feel these prosthetics. This research is still in early stages, but people have seen that having a feel for what's actually going on can improve dexterity.

5) Deep-brain stimulation to treat brain ailments

© Provided by Vox.com Deep brain stimulation DBS Medtronic.

The brain sends signals using both chemicals and electricity. And for decades the main way to intervene and fix brain problems was through the chemical side — through drugs.

But recently that has begun to change. Some people now receive implants in their brains that gave off electrical currents to simulate their brain cells. Think of it like a brain pacemaker.

This technique is called deep-brain stimulation. And it's already FDA-approved for treating Parkinson's disease and a movement disorder called dystonia. Medtronic's deep-brain stimulation system, for example, has been implanted in some 110,000 people. The technique has also been tested in people for psychiatric illnesses, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and severe depression.

 

Above is from MCN:  Bionic body parts: what's already here (eyes!) and what's coming soon